Saved
by HoopBanana
Summary: The floods were coming. Three friends and a young sister trapped in a tent, one obsessed with Animal Crossing: Wild World. They are desperate for help, so the DS Game saves them in the only way it knows how...
1. In Which We Are Introduced

Saved

Saved

Prologue: When In A Storm…Play DS Games

**Disclaimer: In no way do I own this wonderful and inspiring game, except in the sense that my parents paid £30 for it to be my Christmas present and it currently in my DS Game Card slot. Other than that, it is strictly property of Nintendo.**

It was raining. No, it was a little more than raining. Lightning cracked and thunder roared, and the rain came pouring down.

The floods were coming, and at the bottom of the hill in your local woods in a tent was perhaps not the best place to be.

Four teenagers and a child were in this tent, struggling desperately to keep the doors closed and the tent upright.

Well, three of them were. Anna, the second-to-youngest, was just sat in the middle idly playing on her Nintendo DS. She had long red hair piled up on her head with lots of slides and startling blue eyes.

"Anna! Aren't cha gonna help?" Albert, her friend, called. He was five days older than Anna and frequently showed off about it. He had shoulder-length chip-pan blonde hair and thought of himself as a skater, although he was a bit of a pathetic excuse of such. His greasy hair was lank against his head with rain now as he struggled to pull the orange tarpaulin into safety. His azure eyes bored into Anna's skull.

"No," Anna said with her usual cattiness, flipping her hair out of her eyes with attitude. "Damn, my touch screen needs orientating…_again_." She sighed exasperatedly as she powered off her DS and started it again, this time entering the options panel.

"Well, do it _later_, we have more pressing matters at hand right now," Anna's other friend, Alastair, piped up. He was the oldest and never stopped gloating. He had long-ish straight black hair and a nice even tan and thought of himself as cool, even though he was not. _Trust Anna to be like this_, he thought, rolling his green eyes.

"Even I'm helping, and _I'm_ only eleven!" A fourth voice squeaked out, much to the dismay of the older ones. The youngest was Wendy, Anna's annoying sister, although they were nothing alike. Anna and Wendy were infact complete opposites. Their hair and especially their eyes, for Wendy's were jade as opposed to Anna's cobalt's. She wasn't, for a change, getting in a flap about getting her blonde hair wet, although when her My Little Ponies where subjected to the water it was a different matter.

"_ALBERT_! Save them! Save the My Little Ponies!" She had screeched, and poor Albert had had no other option than to run out into the storm after the lost plastic equines.

"_Anna_! Won't you blooming help?" screamed Alastair desperately, nearly getting dragged out into the storm by a particularly ferocious gust of wind.

"Alright, alright. Just let me save my game." Anna resigned.

"What are you playing on, anyway?" asked Albert, ever the curious one.

"_Animal Crossing: Wild World_." Anna replied.

"Oh, I've got that game too!" exclaimed Albert.

Anna nodded. "It's good, innit?" she said in her typical Yorkshire accent.

"Don't say innit, say isn't it," snapped Alastair, all for political correctness at a time like this.

_Typical_, he thought. _Typical for Anna to be all laid-back when there's practically a __hurricane__ outside! Oh, please, can't we just be saved?_

And at that that moment, at the risk of sounding cliché and ironic, they _were_ saved, strangely enough, by Anna's DS.

_Preparing to end your game. Please wait and do not turn the power off._

Anna had always wondered, what if she did? She figured, since there _was _an awful big storm out there, now was the time to find out, the Hell if Resetti gobbed at her when she came back on.

She pressed it. It didn't turn off, oh no.

_Saving you. Do not panic._

_What? _Thought Anna, but there was no time for further contemplation as suddenly Anna and her friends were jolted out of their seats and into the beyond, which happened to be the kind of beyond that spun dizzyingly like a tornado or some kind of Vortex of Doom.

Anyway, they were all screaming and stuff and wondering what the heck was going on and Albert was coming up with all the formula and Latin names for tornado and stuff and suddenly there was a flash of green light and a noise like a firework rocket and then blackness.

**I know it's short; it's just a prologue. Will be more soon! Please review!**


	2. In Which An Idea Is Born

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Chapter 1: In Which An Idea Is Born

**So you want to know what the heck this has to do with Animal Crossing, well, I thought I made it obvious. Anna loves Animal Crossing; it **_**saves **_**them from the storm. Now you will find out more.**

Anna had a headache. It thumped and was very sore. As she opened her eyes she saw something entirely different to her previous surroundings.

The sky was annoyingly clear apart from a few perfectly shaped clouds. They brought to mind marshmallows, but now was not the time for poetic descriptions.

Anna sat up and surveyed her surroundings in more detail. The grass was too irritatingly perfect, and for some reason was flat and covered in little triangles instead of blades of grass. There were trees, too, all identical except from the ones which bore fruit, (peaches, apples, oranges, cherries and pears) the cedars, and the palms with their branches weighed down by hefty coconuts.

This was enough to send most people into shock, but it was even worse for Anna for she found she recognised everything, but she couldn't figure out why.

After a few moments of contemplation, Anna had still come up with nothing and resorted to routine to kick-start her brain. She crawled over to the nearby river (infuriatingly beautiful and calm and full of varied fish) to check her hair hadn't got too messed up in what she called The Roller Coaster of Randomness, and when she peered down into the river's glassy surface, she screamed. Her beautiful red hair was gone!

Well, sort of.

Before, Anna's hair had been auburn and shiny and long and luscious and all other graceful words for luxurious hair, but now it was, well dull. It was a flat, orange-y colour and only reached her chin, where as before it had crawled to halfway down her back. Her eyes, while still blue and almond-shaped, did not sparkle or look real. If she was honest, she looked like a character out of-

She screamed again. "Why the hell am I pixelated?"

A low mumbling was heard. "Seamus, will you turn the sound down! I don't want to listen to you playing Halo!"

_Alistair_, thought Anna with a slight smile on her face. _He thinks he's still at home, bless him._

Anna noticed for the first time that people who looked scarily similar to her surrounded her. Well, they were similar in the sense that they all had the same face shape, the same body shape and the same height (Albert would be overjoyed; he hated being smaller than everybody barring Wendy) and this caused her to scream again. The boys wore little shorts and red shoes, the girls wore identical red shoes and blue and white striped tights. Everything was so similar it was scary.

"Alistair!" Anna tried to stay calm, but her voice rose to a crescendo through the stress of it all. "I think – we're in – in – _Animal Crossing_!"

"What?" Alistair mumbled sleepily. Then, the meaning sunk in properly. "_WHAT?"_

"I know!" Soon they were both screaming at fever pitch.

"Ssh!" Interjected a calm voice. "We don't like shouting here."

"_Tortimer?_"

"Oh, you've got to be kidding," Alistair slapped himself on the forehead and started gently bashing his head on a peach tree. The fruit fell on his head. "Blast!"

"Damn, this is all my fault! I should never have pressed the power button!" Anna ranted too.

Tortimer's face broke out into a sly smile. "Oh, so you figured that out, huh? Clever kids these days."

Anna looked alarmed. "So how many other people have you sucked into this little…practical joke?"

Tortimer became suddenly serious. "This is no joke, Anna."

Anna's look of alarm mutated into distress. "H… how did you know my name?"

Tortimer smiled another crafty smile. "To answer your previous question, not many. Most of the time we just send Resetti to give them a sound tongue-lashing next time they play, but we do have measures for…_special circumstances_…war har HAR!"

Anna rolled her eyes. Obviously, this game wasn't much different when you were actually there.

"You're not going to rope us into working for Tom Nook, are you?" Alistair interjected, looking worried. It was common knowledge that the racoon had irritated him from behind the safe divide of a DS screen, and now he would inevitably see him in person at some point, the annoying fluffiness of his tail would be almost unbearable.

Tortimer looked as though this thought hadn't even come across him. He pondered for a moment, and then said, "No. You've already been through that, albeit from a distance. I think you know how to plant flowers with your hands anyway."

Alistair chuckled.

"Now, what are we going to do about them…" Tortimer was looking at the still-sleeping forms of Albert and Wendy. Alistair and Anna shot devious looks to each other. An idea was born…


	3. In Which This Space Is Too Small

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Chapter 2: In Which Albert and Wendy Discover the Joys of Pitfalls

In _Animal Crossing_, pitfalls would have been a blessing if you weren't the only people able to fall into them. Sure, it was a laugh to plant them outside buildings so that when guests came out they'd fall into them, but mainly they were a pain and gave your thumb cramp pressing the button about twenty billion times to get yourself out of them.

However, when you were actually there, they were much more amusing. In the space of about ten minutes, Alistair and Anna had set traps for Apollo, Rocco and Static (because they were extremely grumpy) and, of course, ambushed the unsuspecting Albert and Wendy. Then they hid behind a tree to watch their plan in action. Of course, Tortimer had conveniently disappeared (because if everything wasn't convenient this wouldn't be a cheesy time-travel fic) and now there was the matter of waiting for them to wake up, which was like staring at a common-or-garden pig in that hope that it would fly. For the less intelligent among you readers, it wasn't going to happen in a while.

Yet, for some reason, it happened after about twenty minutes of Anna annoying Alistair to within an inch of his life (And yes, she did hug him). Wendy stirred first, but even when she finally opened her sleep-encrusted eyes she didn't seem to find the fact that she had woken up underneath a perfect marshmallow-cloud covered sky weird. Anna started to wonder what it was her and her friend Nelly got up to at their sleepovers.

Alistair and Anna had moved Albert and Wendy's sleeping forms next to a rock (which Alistair had hit with a shovel that he had handily found in his pocket just to check that it was the golden rock of the day, and so had bagged a hundred Bells with which he bought some nice writing paper) they then left a note (on the nice writing paper, which happened to be of the lovely variety, you know, the pink one with the hearts; Alistair had chosen it himself) on the rock, with the message saying, "_There you go, I finally paid you back for all the lollipops and money I owe you. Hit it with a shovel. You'll see. Love, Anna._" Alistair had helpfully left his shovel propped up on the rock. Of course the rock was surrounded by pitfalls (which Alistair and Anna had attempted to cover over with the flawless leaves of the flawless trees; Anna had taken great joy from snapping them off) so that when Albert and/or Wendy hit the rock with the shovel, trying to claim the rewards of the golden rock, they would inevitably bounce backwards (as any experienced _Animal Crossing_-er will know) and fall in the pitfalls, unless, of course, they were clever enough to figure out that it was a trap and jump over the pitfalls or something, but Alistair and Anna didn't think they were.

One of these days they'll learn to stop underestimating those two.

Wendy woke up and just lay there staring at the sky, as if realizing that it wasn't normal but not quite caring enough to get up and find out why. It was like how Anna'd be if she had been working her Saturday job, got home, gone straight to bed and then woke up on the Sunday morning to discover her house was gone. She'd probably go back to sleep for a bit before bothering to get up and run around like a headless chicken, like she did in the mildest crisis.

Then Albert woke up, and was decidedly less laid-back. He got up, stood still and pondered, as intellectual people often do for no apparent reason. Wendy watched him calmly. Alistair and Anna tensed. It was now or never.

Albert gazed at the note, in Anna's semi-neat hand. He looked at the paper and muttered Alistair's name, and then he looked at the perfectly polished shiny shovel and muttered it again, shaking his head.

After a few moments, Wendy piped up. "Well?"

"Anna and Alistair are over there," Albert pointed directly at the tree the two were hidden behind. "They've set traps for us here," Albert gestured again, this time to the badly disguised cracks on the ground. "They're trying to trick us into thinking there's gold in this rock, and that's Alistair's shovel, because he's the only person in the universe that would polish a shovel."

Anna sighed in resignation and flopped out from behind the tree. Alistair also emerged, standing up. "We weren't tricking you about the gold part," he said. "There really is gold in that rock."

"There is?" Wendy scrambled to her feet and picked up Alistair's glossy shovel and whacked it hard against the top of the rock. A bag of Bells sprang out, but Wendy lurched backwards uncontrollably, crashed into Albert, and the two of them fell down the pitfall traps. Anna giggled.

Alistair looked balefully at his now dented shovel. "My precious," he said sadly, looking even more forlorn. Anna patted him comfortingly on the shoulder. He shrank back from her touch, the affection-phobe he is.

Watching from a safe distance, Tortimer clicked his tongue sorrowfully. Such troublesome kids. He'd have to sort them out somehow…


	4. In Which Anna Confuses A Duck

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Chapter 3: In Which Anna Confuses A Duck

Albert and Wendy had long since escaped from their predicament without a B button in sight, and now they were taking to exploring the town.

Alistair and Anna were temporarily swept up in their excitement too, and for a while they dashed around the town greeting neighbours, picking fruit (which was only apples, their native fruit), digging for fossils and fishing to earn much needed Bells before the novelty wore off and they though of practicalities and essentials, such as:

"Where are we going to sleep?"

"What about food?"

"Where _are_ my My Little Ponies?"

Alistair found Anna leant up against a tree, attempting to peel an apple with the buckle of her shoe (because Tortimer had stolen her penknife, deeming it inappropriate), and it was made all the more difficult by her little round fingerless hands.

Alistair sat down next to her. "Want your fingers back?"

Anna nodded. "Yes please."

They sighed sadly, thinking of home.

"The town will be underwater by now," Anna said unhappily. "I dread to think of my Mum and Dad bailing water out of the house."

Alistair chuckled despite himself. "I can't see your Mum doing anything of the sort! She'd get your Dad to do it!"

Anna shot him a venomous look. Now was not the time for making wise cracks against her family.

"Sorry," he apologized bashfully.

Anna ignored him, tossing her head high into the air. Her little flat-orange bob bounced pathetically in the windless air.

"You know, that doesn't have nearly the same effect when you have short hair," Alistair said.

"I know," Anna replied miserably, twisting the end of a lock of her shorn hair between her thumb and forefinger.

Alistair flicked his new long fringe out of his eyes. "And this fringe is really annoying," he said, with more than a little irritation present in his voice.

Silence fell between them. Alistair watched in amusement as Anna continued to battle with the seemingly un-peel-able apple.

"Stuff it!" She cried in resignation, throwing the apple that wouldn't be decorticated into the river.

Alistair laughed at Anna's terribly short temper, but quickly quietened himself as the sound of running (webbed) feet on dirt came speeding towards them.

A pink duck with chocolate coloured hair and glassy black eyes like you'd find on a teddy bear hurried into view carrying a fishing rod, its float swinging in the air. The duck wore an indignant look upon its pixelated face, and Alistair for one found it quite formidable.

"Like, what are you doing?" The duck seemed enraged, as cartoon-y smoke was pouring from its… well, ducks don't have ears, so whatever. You get the picture. "You CAN'T pollute the environment! You just _CAN'T_!"

Alistair and Anna looked at each other, very confused and freaked out looks upon their faces.

"Excuse me? And you are?" Anna's catty tone was sharp and to the point. Alistair knew that when she talked like that, the person on the receiving end of said tone was going down.

"My name is Freckles and I think that people should respect the environment and do all they can to keep Woodland's green spaces green!" The duck began rummaging in her pockets and after a few moments pulled out some mint green leaflets, which she promptly pushed into Alistair and Anna's hands. Well, she tried to, but since Alistair and Anna's hands were both round and fingerless, they simply fluttered into their laps.

"I hate not being able to grip anything," said Anna glumly.

Alistair ignored her. "So, Woodland? That's where we are?"

Freckles gave Alistair a very uncomfortable look. "You don't know where you are? How's that?"

Alistair looked even more awkward and took a moment longer than usual to devise an answer which would not get him into even more trouble, and so ended up opting for a cop-out. "It's a long story," he said.

Anna nudged him. "Good call," she whispered so Freckles couldn't hear. Alistair smiled slightly.

"We're getting off the point," said Freckles, her hoity-toity tone back in her voice. "All I'm saying is, that you should take more care to dispose of your waste more responsibly." She leant closer to shield her speech from any passers-by. "And if you do it again, I'll kick your butt."

Anna raised her eyebrows and looked on the point of laughing. "Oh yeah? Well, pinky, if it's alright that I call you that…"

"It isn't," said the duck tartly.

"Tough," said Anna. "Anyway, I'd like to raise a few points to you. Number one, is this paper made out of one hundred per cent recycled material?"

Freckles looked cautiously at Anna. "No…"

"Then you're a great big hypocrite, aren't you? Number two; I threw an _apple _into the river. I don't know how much you know about biodegradability, but I'd hazard a guess at not a lot. What happens if you bury an apple?" She asked the question very slowly, clearly trying to make poor Freckles feel about two years old.

"It grows into a tree," Freckles said, looking down at her feet and shuffling about; a habit that very much irritated Anna.

"Yes," Anna said in that patronizing tone teachers use to make stupid kids feel special and clever kids feel stupid. "And if you simply drop one on the ground, or, indeed, throw it into the river?"

"It rots away!" The duck looked enlightened. She quickly took the pamphlets back from Alistair and Anna's lap, stuffed them back into her pocket and hurried on her way, her pink freckled cheeks clashing horribly with her brash red blush. Alistair and Anna looked at each other, before breaking down into uncontrollable laughter.

Phyllis had been watching the entire exchange from behind the safe partition of a nearby house. She was under strict orders from Tortimer to keep an eye on those 'pesky kids' and intended on reporting all the details of the encounter to the mayor with, of course, the odd embellishment here and there. She is Phyllis, after all!


	5. In Which This Space Is Too Small Again

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Chapter 4: In Which Nook Makes Many Terrible Mistakes

Anna and Alistair sat under that tree for a long time, watching the sky change colours, first from pale blue to apricot, then to hot pink, then to deep purple and finally to indigo.

"I wish I could see the sunset properly, like at home," said Alistair.

Anna sighed. "Me too," she replied. "Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone?"

"They paved paradise and put up a parking lot," Alistair agreed.

They sat, calmly daydreaming for many long homesick moments before the unmistakeable squabbling voices of Albert and Wendy, and a new unfamiliar gruff voice interrupted their brainwork.

Anna leant forward and saw her friend and her sister being dragged across a bridge by what looked to be a purple chipmunk.

_Just when I thought things couldn't get any stranger_, she thought. She pulled herself to her feet, wiped the dirt of her backside and ran towards the approaching party.

"Hey! What are you doing? Let go of them!" She called in distress as the chipmunk continued to drag his complaining captives across the bridge.

The chipmunk looked at her quizzically and its tail seemed to jolt with some kind of electric energy. "What are you going to do if I don't, krzzt?"

Anna had to come up with an answer, and fast. After a moment of hopeless stuttering, she finally blurted out with, "I'll plug you into an electric socket!"

Wendy made a weird, gurgling laugh, half due to the fact that she found Anna's comeback funny, the other half probably had something to do with the fact that this electrical chipmunk had one of its electrifying arms around her spindly pixelated neck.

The chipmunk gave her the kind of glare most people give to door-to-door salesmen and tried to drag his prisoners past her on the narrow bridge.

It didn't happen, though, for Anna, on angry impulse, kicked the chipmunk exactly where it hurts the most, and sent him hurtling backwards into the river, releasing Albert and Wendy in the process. They flew behind her back in case the chipmunk should make a rebound.

Of course, Anna's plan had inadvertently been perfect. How better to fend off a powered-up chipmunk than chuck it in a river?

Albert, Anna and Wendy fled back to where Alistair had been watching, open-mouthed.

"Run, before Volty the Chipmunk there gets out of the river," Anna said frenziedly.

The four of them ran to their humble house not far from the place of incident. It was still only small and sported a bright purple roof, Anna's favourite colour. Once inside the house, they all let out a sigh of relief. They'd all had enough of manic residents for one day.

Alistair and Anna were giving Albert and Wendy stern cynical looks.

"What?" Wendy said defensively, rubbing a red mark on her arm where the chipmunk had gripped her too tightly.

"What did you do to tick off the chipmunk, anyhow?" Anna asked with more than a little annoyance in her voice. She didn't really like having to resort to violence, but would if she had to.

"…We tried to attach his tail to a portable T.V., to see if he could power it." Wendy said, not sounding at all proud of her actions. Albert was wearing an expression of similar regret.

Anna sighed condescendingly. "Oh, come on Albert. I expect this kind of thing from you, Wendy, but Albert? What the heck was going through your head?"

Albert suddenly looked indignant. "It was a very important scientific experiment! I mean, imagine if it worked, and we'll probably never know now if it does, seeing as he caught us and then tried to strangle us, we could power the whole world on purple chipmunks!"

Anna tilted her head to one side and raised her eyebrows. "You know what? There's only one problem with that theory."

"Which is?"

"In the real world, PURPLE ELECTRIC CHIPMUNKS DON'T EXIST."

"Oh yeah," Albert said, feeling more than a bit embarrassed.

"_Ohh yeah_," Anna mimicked him.

"_I _think it's time to go to bed," said Alistair, halting the argument, which had kind of turned into an Albert-bashing session. Everyone, barring Anna, who was still very fired up, murmured their agreement.

The party walked up the stairs to the room known by AC:WW players as the Save Room, but now served as their bedroom and a race for their beds broke out.

Anna bagged the red bed, which complemented her hair nicely, so it didn't look quite so flat, and Alistair, being almost as fast as Anna (but not quite, seeing as vegetarians are 7% slower than meat-eaters) got the blue bed, and Albert and Wendy were left to bicker over who got the green or yellow bed. After ten minutes Alistair grew tired of trying to sleep through the dispute (Anna wasn't bothered, she could doze through anything), got out of bed, allocated (here having the meaning of shoved them into) beds to the fighting pair, so Albert ended up with yellow and Wendy with green. Everyone was so dead on their feet that they actually wondered if it mattered anyway, and was soon dreaming peacefully in their first night in this strange computerized world.

* * *

The next morning, Anna was up first. Alistair, woken by her kicking the door open loudly, came down the stairs not long after, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

"What you doing, Anna?" he asked groggily, blinking as the light from the windows hit him forcefully.

"Trying-" She said, already sounding frustrated at such an early hour of the morning. God help her blood pressure. "To peel – these stupid apples!" A thump. An apple rolled away from her and nudged the toe of Alistair's shoe.

"Just give up on them. We'll eat them skins and all," he told her.

Anna deposited all the apples in her pockets onto the floor with a relieved sigh.

"Maybe you, Albert and Wendy should go fishing for some different food today," Alistair suggested tentatively.

Anna grimaced. "Can't stand the taste of fish, me, so it looks like it's going to be Albert and Wendy's job."

Alistair made a face.

"But it looks like we're going to be living off the herbivore diet for a while yet," said Anna sadly. "We haven't even got enough money for a stove to cook the fish on!"

Alistair looked awkward. "Let's hope that earning money is as easy as it is on the game," he said. Anna nodded.

A knock on the door made them both jump. Anna proceeded towards it. Alistair heard her open it and then heard a very annoying, all-too-familiar voice.

"Ah! You must be Wendy, yes?"

That was Nook's Terrible Mistake Number One. Never mistake Anna for Wendy.

"No…" Anna growled, irritation already rising in her voice. "I'm Anna."

"Well, hello and welcome to Woodland! I would just like to inform you that _I _kindly erected this house for you out of the goodness of my heart…"

Nook's Terrible Mistake Number Two: Never make Anna feel like she needs charity.

"But, as you surely know, business is tough, and I am demanding payment-"

Nook's Terrible Mistake Number Three: Never make Anna look like she's tried to rob you, even if she has.

"PAYMENT? We never asked for this stupid house! We never even asked to _be_ here! How dare you come around here in your stupid APRON with your stupid fluffy tail and idiotic eyes and make us feel like we owe you something, because we don't! WE OWE YOU NOTHING!"

Clearly being put in a different dimension had put a lot of strain on Anna's already quick temper.

I peeked around the doorframe and saw Nook there, looking terribly intimidated by this strange woman with orange hair. "Of course, I am not commanding you pay all your loan _now_-"

"Good, because I have no intention of paying!"

Nook gave her a knowing look. "Ah, but I have been informed that there are…" Nook paused to look down at the clipboard he carried. "Four people living in this residence, and it is _such _a small space, yes yes? If you pay off all your loan, I can extend your house for you, I will get my money and you will get your much needed extension."

Anna froze for a moment, as if she wanted to decline but wasn't sure whether it was the best thing to do.

But he had made Nook's Terrible Mistake Number Four: Never try to bribe Anna.

"I have made my decision, Mr. Nook," she said slowly, and quite softly.

Nook suddenly looked very bright and chirpy. "Ah! I trust it is the right one!"

"Come here," Anna beckoned to him. He leant in towards her. "You can take your offer and shove it up your bum because I AIN'T PAYIN'!"

Nook looked shocked. He obviously wasn't used to being refused.

Anna abruptly and rudely slammed the door in his face. She saw Alistair staring at her, aghast, and said sharply, "What?"

Alistair followed her as she stalked across the room towards the apple supply. "Anna, you know how much we need that space-"

She turned around to face him. "Not as much as we need basic essentials, like, say, a TOILET? Or a FRIDGE? Priorities, Alistair!"

"Shouldn't our priority be finding a way back to our world?" Alistair asked.

Anna looked at him doubtfully. "And go back to a flooded town? Alistair, don't you realize we're here for our own good? Without this, we'd have drowned in the flood! We'd be _dead_, Alistair!"

"And extending this hovel wouldn't be for our own good?" Alistair was also angry now.

"Not as much as saving up money to get utilities would!"

The argument was brought up short when the surprisingly timid voice of Wendy came softly out form the stairwell. "Guys? Stop fighting."

Anna and Alistair silenced themselves, contenting themselves with look at each other stonily.

"First, we'll set up a decent standard of living in this shack, then we'll see about paying off Nooky's loan." Anna's tone was final and she flounced away from Alistair back up the stairs to the Save Room.

* * *

**I just had to get the Big Yellow Taxi reference in there. Sorry. Couldn't help myself.**


	6. In Which Anna Makes A Friend

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Chapter 5: In Which Anna Makes A Friend

First, they had run around the town shaking trees (which resulted in many terrible unsightly bee-stings) to see if any money would fall out of them. This earned them 1,000 Bells, which was enough to buy a fishing rod and a net. Collecting and selling apples earned more money, but soon they ran out of those, but it gave more funds with which to buy more helpful equipment. Quickly after that, the four friends had assigned each other jobs to do to help raise urgently needed money to buy utensils. Albert was given the job of fishing, as Alistair was a sworn animal activist, Anna disagreed with killing innocent fish, and it was unwise to let Wendy near anything with a hook on the end. Wendy was given the slightly less dangerous task of catching butterflies, which bring in quite a few bob at Nook and Cranny's (although that did mean putting her in charge of a net, which was a risk in itself), Alistair was designated the very gentle job of sitting about on a rock with a slingshot waiting to see if any balloons with presents attached floated through the sky, and lastly, Anna was given a shovel with which to hit rocks in case they should contain gold, and dig for fossils and gyroids.

Albert took to his job swimmingly (if you'll pardon the pun) and soon came racing up to Alistair waving his first catch on the end of his rod.

Alistair backed away from it in disgust. "What is it?"

"A fish, duh."

"I mean, what kind of fish?"

Albert looked thoughtful for a moment, rolling his eyes back into his head. "Uhhh… horse mackerel. Don't ask me how I know that. I suppose it's just the Animal Crossing universal knowledge of any kind of fish or bug. Nay? YAY!"

Alistair rolled his eyes. Now, to make things worse, his friend was spouting bad Animal Crossing jokes.

* * *

Wendy, meanwhile, had got quite distracted from her task. She had found the chipmunk that had attacked her yesterday (which was called Static, by the way), and now was getting her revenge on it… with a net.

"HEY! WHAT ARE YOU DOING, KRZZT?"

* * *

Alistair was bored waiting to see if any presents were floating by.

* * *

Anna was dashing madly around the town, shovel in hand, striking every rock she found (and miraculously not denting said shovel even further) and digging up any cracks she found in the ground, falling down many pitfalls in the process.

Infact, it was through falling down one of those dreaded holes that she actually got some extra money. You see, she was struggling to get out of one of those darned orifices when she heard a sleepy voice from above her.

"You need some help there, myawn?"

Anna looked up at the arrival. It was a cat, blue with big amber eyes and pointy ears. "Um, yes please," she said meekly.

The cat extended its paw and yanked Anna up out of the pit.

"Thanks," Anna said.

"Don't mention it," said the cat flippantly. Then he regarded her more closely. "Say, you're one of those new kids in town, aren't ya, myawn? Them homo sap-y things."

"Homo sapiens," Anna provided helpfully. "More commonly known as humans."

The cat blinked at her. "I'm Moe, anyhow, and you are…"

"Anna." Anna almost held her hand out to shake his paw, but then she remembered she had no fingers.

"Anna, right, myawn." Moe suddenly looked enlightened. "Say, we could like totally be buddies! Drink bubble tea together, or something!"

Anna had forgotten how strange this game could be. She looked a little freaked out as she replied, "Sure."

Her newfound friend was on the verge of jumping for joy. "Great, myawn! Well, I'll leave you to it, then!"

"Ok," Anna wasn't sure whether to be flattered or disturbed. Either way, she needed to get back to work.

It was about ten minutes later that Moe came running up to her again, this time carrying a net identical to Wendy's.

"I met your sister, myawn!" He cried enthusiastically. Anna wondered how anyone could be cheery about that. "I helped her catch bugs! Then she hit me with her net…" Her feline friend now seemed depressed.

"Ah. Yeah. She might do that," said Anna awkwardly, struggling to explain her sister's random violence.

The cat perked up again. "But it's ok, myawn! She was probably just doing some sort of test to see if I'm man enough to be her friend!"

_Looks like a job for Denial Cat! _Anna thought bitterly.

"Probably," she replied, in the hope of killing the conversation so that Moe would go away and let her get on with digging.

Moe was obviously not concerned about this anymore, though. His head was tilted to one side and he was gazing at her curiously. "Listen, myawn, I don't like seeing my chums working their tails off – well, you don't have a tail, because you're – what was it? Human, yes, but you get the idea, so I'll give you a reward if you perform the simple task of delivering this letter to Queenie!"

The cat rummaged in his pocket for a moment before pulling out a slightly crumpled cream envelope, sealed with red wax. Anna glanced at it as she put in carefully in her own pocket. _Who seals their letters in wax these days, anyway?_

"Sounds easy enough," Anna agreed.

"Just do it within an hour and I'll give you something unbelievably good!" Moe exclaimed, looking ecstatic at just the thought.

Anna rushed off to where she believed Queenie's house was. When she knocked on the door, a very disgruntled previously napping Static opened it, and pointed her in the right direction.

Queenie was a nice-enough purple turkey, who seemed adequately happy to make her acquaintance, and was overjoyed when presented with her letter from Moe. She babbled on for a while about how amazing and mind-blowing the letter was, before ending with, "Say hi to Moe for me!"

Anna hurried off back to Moe to inform him of the successful delivery. She let Moe vent his happiness before throwing in, "Queenie says hi, by the way."

Moe then went through the performance of throwing eight hundred Bells into Anna's waiting hands, and much thanking ensued from both parties. By the time the conversation had finally finished, Anna could see Alistair coming towards her dragging a classic sofa and looking very tired.

Anna ran over to meet him. Alistair told her about how he had chased across half of the town to catch the rapidly escaping package-carrying balloon, and how it had almost got away over the cliff border due to Alistair's lack of competence with a slingshot, and how he reckoned he had only managed to snare it at the last minute through pure luck. Anna did her best to assure him that he had an underlying talent with the slingshot that was just taking its time to come out. Alistair then decided that since Anna seemed to be in such a good mood he'd ask her a favour. A rather big one, actually.

"Anna…you know how much I hate Tom Nook, don't you?" Alistair began tentatively, laying on the sweetness in his voice thick.

Anna raised her eyebrows, suspicious already. "Yes?"

"Well, as you can see, I have this sofa that I shot out of the sky…" Alistair gestured to the piece of furniture he had been towing.

"Yes?" Anna seemed even more wary now, not wanting to become lumbered with the cumbersome sofa.

"Well, I was wondering if you could maybe take this over to Nook's for me and sell it? Please?" Alistair's voice was more pleading than Anna had ever heard it, and it sounded strange.

"No." She said shortly, jingling the Bells in her pocket ostentatiously.

"I'll buy you a hat." Alistair had broken the bribery rule, but he had known Anna long enough to know that that rule didn't apply to anything cosmetic or aesthetic.

"What?" Anna seemed very surprised. She wasn't used to Alistair buying her gifts.

"A really nice one."

"Well…okay, then."

Anna relieved Alistair of the unwieldy sofa and started to drag it back across the bridge towards Nook's, preparing herself for her second battle with the raccoon.


End file.
